You can be aggressive and go for a block and not run into the kicker. It's simply a matter of angle of attack. Can be coached and learned. I don't know if our staff coached it, but I can sure as hell guarantee our players didn't learn it.

...that he had inside information on who the next coach at Michigan would be about two weeks before Harbaugh was hired, but that his source was so good and so close to the situation he couldn't even say who the hire was. It wasn't Harbaugh, but he promised that Michigan fans would love it.

Peppers' explosiveness is best used on the edge, in a jet sweep or reverse, or in catching the ball either out of the backfield or as a receiver. The vast majority of his offensive snaps were with him at QB where none of these was possible. I really thought the staff was saving a wrinkle for this game - apparently not. . Since he never threw the ball in any real way all season, and he was either read-optioning or faking the read option with a pre-determined hole to run to, the potential advantage of his incredible gifts on offense never really materialized.

I am just surprised (and bitterly disappointed) that we never really used him like we could have.

I strenuously object to the idea that the CFB committee should have any championship-related criteria. They have one freaking job - get the best 4 teams. I don't give a shit what their record is or how many losses or what conference they are in, or anything else. Pick the best four teams. Who are the best 4 teams? Period.

Also, calling for the removal of the "running into the kicker" penalty just pisses me off. We've done it several times this year... it is so easy to correct and yet we did it in this, of all games, where every tiny advantage is magnified tenfold. Inexcusable, and saying it is a bad rule is cowardice.

As great as the proprietors of this site are at generating content, this is a hobby for them that they are really good at. They are essentially horrible businessmen who don't care about making more money or the continuous improvement of their livlihood. Which is fine, it is their website they can do whatever the hell they want to with it, and I'll keep reading it because a good part of it is really really good and entertaining... and they will keep having sponsors like some dude they know who is a mortgage broker, who I sure is a fine fellow but who pays them about 5% of what the space could be worth if they had any business accumen whatsoever.

But they have proven over the years that they really don't care what you, the user, thinks. Every so often there is a big uprising of MGoUsers who threaten to stop reading the site and they keep coming back (just like me), and Brian and Co keep putting really good content on an really structurally inadequate and visually horrific platform. And they keep wasting copious amounts of time on USMNT analysis when literally 99% of their audience could not give a shit less about, because - I have no idea because... they want to keep being a 3rd rate website, I guess?

Anywho, the site will continue to be ugly and suck, so don't hold your breath. Just keep reading and enjoying. Except when something really interesting happens in the world of Michigan sports. Then you can check ESPN like everyone else does.

No one said the content is bad you dipshit. We all love it that is why we are here. We appreciate the content and the work that goes into it. But the servers. They. Are. Shit. And it is costing the proprietors money in clicks and therefore advertising dollars during what should be their busiest time. Comments about the servers are made with the intention to help them understand that their traffic is down, which they should care about if they actually like to make money from this labor of love.

No way this should hold up. I am all about hating ND and their sanctimonious holier-than-thou BS. But this punishment does not fit the crime. From what I can tell it is one stupid jock-sniffing student trainer that probably cheated with these guys in exchange for invites to parties at their house. Far FAR worse things have been done by other programs with direct institutional involvement at worst, or intentional indifference at best.

UNC? UK basketball? Cam Newton? JoePa? OSU football in multiple instances, to say nothing of all the SEC bagman crap that has gone on forever? These all had institutional elements of actual fraud by peopel supposedly in charge of these things. Killing Two years worth of wins for one rogue trainer without involvment of the team or academic personnel is overkill, IMO. Probaltion and possibly a postseason ban would be appropriate.

...our chances of landing a recruit go up dramatically. He is one impressive guy, and has been a key mentor to so many Michigan men over the years, many of whom are in the NFL or wildly successful in their non-football lives. Any mother that meets him will understand what a father figure he is.

No doubt we put our best foot forward here. If we had a real chance going in, even small, I would bet a paycheck that we've got him.

1) He cared about his players. He was hard on them, but he cared about them. Absolutely like a father figure to a lot of guys who were without fathers. Lloyd and Mo were incredibly similar in that regard. There were several assistant coaches during that timeframe who were climbers (some of whom are nationally prominant today); less concerned about the players than about the wins and their careers. Mo was the opposite, possibly to a fault.

2) The drinking at the Excalibur club and the end of his time at UM was incredibly out of character in two ways. First, he never drank. While on the road, coaches would gather for dinner in the hotel restaurant or in a suite. Many of them would have a drink or two - businesslike (nobody having more than a couple) but the drinks were there. Mo would NEVER have one. In fact I always kind of figured he just didn't drink. Second, one of the first things he said to every group of incoming freshmen (and repeated it often during their careers) was "You have to be BETTER than other students. Nobody thinks your special here" The message was that media, other students, fans, etc. will try to get you in compromising situations because you are a football player. You need to be cleaner than other students, because if you get caught in a compromising position, the results are way worse than for any other student. I can specifically remember him saying at a meeting with new freshman "If I ever hear of one of you getting in trouble with the police and expecting special treatment because you're a football player here, you'll have to answer to me"

I will always remember the day I knew he was done. For those who don't remember, there were media reports that he was drunk at a restaurant and had to be taken in by police. This was out of character enough, but I think he would have survived. A couple days later a WJR reporter got his hands on the audio tape of Mo in the police car, slurred speech, saying "you can't do this to me, don't you realize who I am?" It was looped on local media. A couple days later he resigned.

...The student managers, at least when I was there, had inside information on many internal areas of the program: injuries, discipline, depth charts, coach-player relationships, etc.. They were at every practice and at many meetings, before and after, in the trainng room, at training table, etc. There is litte doubt in my mind that when I hear "sources close to the program" in media reports it could very well be student managers.

I and my fellow managers could certainly have written a book full of funny, touching, and scary antecdotes of the program. I would never have done it, and neither would most of the guys I worked with. There was a code of ethics that said that what happened inside the program stayed there.

Agree 100% with everything you said. My original point was simply that Brian's obsessive bashing of all things Lloyd is revealing his biases, and that it is time to move on and simply admit that the Lloyd Carr, while imperfect, was way better than his next two successors, by comparison.

He sucked at his job while he was here, and now he sucks at it somewhere else that is not here. Who cares? Let's move on and appreciate the Lloyd era as an imperfect time that brought us lots of Big Ten Championships, New Years Day bowl games, and a National Champinoship. Time to move on.

This blog has always been anti-Lloyd, and this obsession with DeBord is just a carryover from that.

Everyone on this blog was happy to see Lloyd retire, because apparently consistent big ten chapionships, new years' bowl games, and a national championship weren't good enough, because he was "old fashioned" in his offensive philosophy (codeword "manball"), or "too loyal to his assistants" (Ask Jim Herrmann about that)

My point was this: In the darkest days of the subsequent Rodriguez and later Hoke eras you would think they might appreciate the consistent success Lloyd had more, even if they disagreed with it's mechanisms (i.e. offense and defensive philosophies). But then we read more about "The Debordenberg project" with references to "Queensbury's (sic) Rules program under Lloyd Carr" and we realize that they have no such appreciation, and instead will bash Lloyd in perpetuity.

They were ready to usher in the Enlightened Age of Football where every QB is dual threat and every snap is shotgun. The grass was greener on the Spread and Shred side of the fence. They were wrong, obviously, but they are not willing to admit it. That's all I am saying.

Brandstatter is a TERRIBLE play by play guy. He and Deirdorf are constantly stepping all over each other to add their analysis, meanwhile neither one is giving score, time, and down-and-distance half the time. As annoying as Blaha is, at least you can count on him to tell you there is "four and twenty-two left in the half" (4:22).

But even as bad as Brandy is, Will Teeman (sp?) is the worst play by play I guy I have every heard, doing MSU basketball. You honestly can't even tell who has the ball half the time.

Nothing wrong with having "homer" announcers, but the standard really needs to be higher for a PBP guy.

Separating Hoke from Rodriguez eras does not change my point, which is that people should appreciate Lloyd Carr more as a coach after we had to live through those two eras, or one era, or however many eras you think it was.

...He was drafted in 2000. But the proprietors of this blog always look for a chance to bash Lloyd Carr at every opportunity, even if it means commenting on a middling SEC team's mediocre offense. Obviously it is Lloyd's influence as a terrible coach that is causing MIke Debord to suck at Tennessee.

You would think the RichRod/Hoke era may have cured some people of their hatred of Lloyd. Apparently not. It's time to let it go, guys.

Just because you lived in Lincoln Park for 22 months during that one internship does not mean you are automatically a cubs fan. Especially since that was 15 years ago and you couldn't have named a single player on the team in July of this year. Go away bandwagon Cubs fan. Go away.